Abstract:

Hikikomori , coined by Tokyo Psychologist Saito Tamaki, describes a trend of Japanese youth, primarily male, who shut out contact with society by hiding within their parents' homes for months or years at a time. In the process, these hermits become truants and school refusals, failing out of school and work through their long periods of seclusion. Further, reentry into society as middle-class adults is difficult for those with a history of acute social withdrawal. This study examines Takeyama, a private rehabilitation institution for hikikomori in Tokyo, Japan. Over the three years of Takeyama's rehabilitation program, hikikomori youth are exposed to daily social rehabilitation structured around an idealized norm of conduct through group participation, routinization, and repetition. The process of hikikomori rehabilitation at Takeyama also takes on the dimensions of gender and class socialization: the normalization of hikikomori youth with middle class backgrounds into a viable adult gendered working class identity.